There are other “rules,” such as James N Frey’s ten rules and Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing, which includes: “never open a book with weather,” “never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’,” and “keep your exclamation points under control.” I can’t show you all of them because, Elmore Leonard now has written a book around his aphorisms. It’s $15 and I probably will pick up a copy.

I admit that I like rules and, by nature, I’m not a rule breaker. I have some friends, who I have met through youwriteon.com, and they love to point out writers when they don’t follow the rules. “Look,” they say, “so and so started with the story with…” One such example of rule ignoring is JK Rowling and her Harry Potter books, he asseverated knowledgeably! One of them steered me toward an entry on Emma Darwin‘s This Itch of Writing blog – “Demandingly ‘wrong’-headed,” that started with the “rules” and ended with being taught how to write.

Hubris

One dismisses standards at one’s peril. Check out this one example on JA Konrath’s blog, “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing” titled “Bad Stories.”

I think mostly what we can learn from Mr. Konrath is the fine art of self-promotion. His writing is hardly inspirational. I tried and couldn’t forge ahead after the first three chapters of “Whiskey Sour”, one of his Jack Daniels books. Just marginally more imaginative than Payge Turner.

But you are right about rules. You gotta learn ’em, you gotta know ’em, you gotta respect ’em and you gotta be very aware of when you’re breakin’ ’em. And if you do, you’d better be real, damn good with your chosen alternative. And then you gotta be prepared to be told you’re wrong.